Refractions of Violence

ISBN-13: 9780415966665 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 224 str.

Martin Jay

Opis

Refractions of Violence collects the recent essays of leading cultural critic and intellectual historian Martin Jay. Ranging over a wide variety of subjects, from Walter Benjamin's response to World War I to the Holocaust and the events of 9/11, this collection addresses the troubling issues of the intersection of violence and visual culture. It argues that we live in a closed economy of violence in which no outside can provide us with a safe haven from the treat of sudden, perhaps even fatal injury, either real or symbolic. By examining a number of ways in which the dialectic of violence and counter-violence finds its way into the arts, both high and low, and permeates visual experience in general, it hopes to cast some light on the dark recesses of contemporary life.

Recenzje

"Refractions of Violence is a work of incidental greatness. Setting out to write a series of occasional pieces largely centering on issues of visuality and visual culture, Jay has produced almost as a side-effect a sustained and penetrating inquiry into the 'finite economy' of violence in the contemporary world. As a further, unexpected bonus, he has given us an intimate, witty, nuanced, and altogether memorable account of the conditions of intellectual life in a culture of extremity. All the many virtues of Jay's remarkable oeuvre are in evidence here, but in a form at once accessible and deeply serious, informal and fully engaged." -- Geoffrey Galt Harpham, National Humanities Center
"Well known for his histories of comprehensive scope and conceptual drive, such as Marxism and Totality and Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought, Martin Jay is also one of most astute analysts of contemporary culture. Refractions of Violence shows him at his best, developing lucid insights into the new force of violence today, exploring its strange symbiosis with visual culture, tracking its unpredictable effects in political debate, delivering his critical assessments with characteristic curiosity, sensitivity, and generosity." -- Hal Foster, Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University
"The 20th century has been called the age of extremes. The 21st may well become known as the age of violence. In this broad-ranging series of essays -- for the most part scholarly but at times striking a personal note -- Martin Jay skillfully traces the multiple intersecting rays cast by violence and its representations in both elite and popular culture. This excellent book should be of great interest not only to historians but to anyone wanting greater insight into a troubled present as it is shaped by a turbulent past." -- Dominick LaCapra, Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor of Humanistic Studies, Cornell University

Spis treści

Introduction  1. Against Consolation: Walter Benjamin and the Refusal to Mourn  2. Peace in Our Time  3. Fathers and Sons: Jan Philipp Reemtsma and the Frankfurt School  4. The Ungrateful Dead  5. When Did the Holocaust End? Reflections on Historical Objectivity  6. The Conversion of the Rose  7. Pen Pals with the Unicorn Killer  8. Kwangju: From Massacre to Biennale  9. Must Justice Be Blind? The Challenge of Images to the Law  10. Diving into the Wreck: Aesthetic Spectatorship at the Turn of the Millennium  11. Astronomical Hindsight: The Speed of Light and Virtual Reality  12. Returning the Gaze: The American Response to the French Critique of Occularcentrism  13. Lafayette’s Children: The American Reception of French Liberalism  14. Somaesthetics and Democracy: John Dewey and Contemporary Body Art  15. The Paradoxes of Religious Violence  16. Fearful Symmetries: 9/11 and the Agonies of the Left

O autorze

Martin Jay is Professor of History at University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of several books including Fin-de-Siéle Socialism and Other Essays (1988), Force Fields (1993) and co-editor of Vision in Context (1996), all published by Routledge.